Dan Corkum (Class I) won the grand prize in Seventeen magazine’s annual short story contest for high school students. Dan’s honor wins him a $1,000 cash prize and a trip to New York to meet with a Barnard College creative writing professor. Dan’s story, “Painting By Numbers,” is a tale of self-discovery, he says.

Dan, whose favorite writer—by a slim margin—is Kurt Vonnegut, wrote the story in a creative writing class with Lisa Baker, who joined the ranks of Milton’s legendary English department in 2001. “She makes me want to write,” Dan says. “I would not be who I am as a writer without my classes with Ms. Baker. She’s engaging. She’s supportive.”

In addition to creative writing, Dan co-edits The Milton Measure, one of the school's two student newspapers and one of more than 10 student publications. He also earned wages last summer as a copy-writing intern at Hill-Holiday, a Boston-based communications agency in the John Hancock Tower. There, he wrote advertising copy for the Dunkin’ Donuts account and learned, he said, a lot about “masstige” or prestige marketing for the masses. (He wrote a recent non-fiction paper on the subject; Lisa Baker calls the piece "phenomenal.") His second internship was at Boston magazine, as an editorial intern: Dan wrote arts and entertainment reviews, some of which were published and some of which were syndicated.

Dan also co-heads the Coffee Club at Milton, a group of seniors that meets for coffee and talks politics. Co-founder John Dennison (Class I) found a $600 espresso machine for $1 at a garage sale. After a thorough cleaning and completing a quest to couple the right amount of coffee with just the right pressure, Dan reports that the group graduated from mediocre coffee to perfectly brewed espresso.

In the Seventeen magazine contest last year, Emma Clippinger ’04 won one of five honorable mentions—one of eight total prizes—for her story, “Finding the Ocean.” Hers was one of more than 2,000 submissions. Alumna Miriam Lawrence won the grand prize in 2002. Other winners of the contest have included Sylvia Plath, Lorrie Morre and Joyce Maynard.

Click here to read “Painting By Numbers” by Dan Corkum.